PITTSBURGH — Stephen Wood left his New York City neighborhood last month to play college basketball at Duquesne University partly because the campus is considered so safe.

“That was the whole point, getting away from New York,” the freshman guard said Monday, a day after five of his basketball teammates were shot. “You’re trying to get away from it, and then to have it happen ...”

What happened was perhaps the worst crime-related tragedy sustained by an NCAA major college sports program, the shooting of nearly half of a basketball team’s primary roster in a few mere seconds of violence.

Three players remained hospitalized Monday night _ including junior forward Sam Ashaolu, 23, a recent junior college transfer who, like Wood, had been on campus only a few weeks.

Ashaolu was in critical condition at Mercy Hospital, fighting for his life with bullet fragments in his head. Family members and several friends who drove in from Canada kept a constant vigil at his bedside.

Also hospitalized was Stuard Baldonado, a 6-foot-7 forward and another junior college transfer, who was upgraded to fair condition with left arm and back injuries. He began walking Monday night and is expected to be released from Mercy later in the week.

Baldonado, 21, was told by surgeons that a bullet missed his spinal column _ and almost certain paralysis _ by one-quarter of an inch before lodging in a lower back muscle.

The bullet is expected to be removed Tuesday.

“I’m lucky,” Baldonado told The Associated Press in his first interview since the shooting. “I feel much better today.”

Junior guard Kojo Mensah, shot in an arm and shoulder, was kept an extra night in UPMC Presbyterian to receive additional injections of antibiotics. Mensah, 21, transferred from Siena to Duquesne three weeks ago.

Wood, 18, and guard Aaron Jackson, 20, related to The Associated Press how the shootings began moments after they left an on-campus party staged Saturday night by the Black Student Union.

“It seemed like the bullets never stopped coming,” Jackson said.

“They kept coming, constantly,” Wood said.

The basketball team had attended en masse a football game earlier in the day, then went to the dance. Because students from other schools also attended, a Duquesne identification card was not needed to gain admittance.

Several players agreed the shootings occurred after a male, who was not a student, became angry when a woman he accompanied to the dance began talking with the players.

“We didn’t have any conflict at all,” Wood said. “We were just having a good time. There was jealousy because girls were showing us attention.”

Evidence collected by police suggested there were two shooters, not one. Duquesne officials were told by police that .38 caliber shell casings were recovered outside an on-campus garage near the crime scene.

Duquesne coach Ron Everhart, who slept only about six hours from Saturday night through late Monday night, called what happened “absolute mayhem.” But he was encouraged after NCAA president Myles Brand phoned to offer full support to his staggered program.

Baldonado is considered the most promising of the 10 recruits brought in by Everhart during a massive rebuilding of a team that went 3-24 last year. Baldonado likely won’t play this season, as a back injury like his commonly needs two to three months of rehabilitation.

Baldonado also was shot in the left arm, and doctors transplanted a vein from his groin to that arm during reconstructive surgery.

Junior center Shawn James, the nation’s leading shot blocker last season while playing for Everhart at Northeastern, was out of the hospital but may need additional treatment to have a bullet removed from his left foot.

According to the players, Mensah, Ashaolu and Baldonado were the first to be hit; James escaped by running across the nearby football field.

Everhart said his players rushed to each other’s aid, threw their bodies atop one another for protection and improvised first aid during a time when they easily could have been shot additional times.

“The young men on this team reacted with bravery and courage,” he said.

Wood, who was not struck, saw Baldonado bleeding badly from his left arm and quickly took off his own shirt and applied a tourniquet.

“I turned away, and saw Stu on the floor, and my first reaction was to take my shirt off and try to stop the bleeding,” Wood said. “Then I turned around and I saw Sam laying there.”

Mensah, struck himself, aided at least one other player while fighting to control his own bleeding. Jackson lifted the 250-pound Baldonado on his back, carried him to his car and drove him to nearby Mercy Hospital.

“He was real heavy,” Jackson said. “He’s the strongest guy I’ve ever met. But when he passed out on me in the car, man, that really (was bad).”

Jackson and Wood, however, downplayed their roles.

“You think, `Oh, that’s my man, we’re going to look out for him,’” Jackson said.

Wood agreed, saying, “It’s amazing how we’ve bonded as a team in a couple of weeks. They would do the same thing for us, if it were the other way around.”

University president Charles Dougherty, who visited with the injured players in their hospital rooms Monday, said it was the first known shooting in the 128-year history of the 10,000-student university in downtown Pittsburgh.

“No one has described a scenario that comes close to justifying violence of any sort, no less this dastardly, cowardly kind of violence,” said Dougherty, who said the school would study additional security measures needed.

The players are convinced the shootings have made a still-developing team even closer.

“Our morale is down right now, but we have so much team chemistry,” Jackson said. “We found out we really love each other, and we’ve only known each other for a month.”